After Vatican agreement, China’s Communist leader is still trying to stamp out religion. Yet, Vatican is turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the problem.﻿ Loyalty to State, above Christ.

After Vatican agreement, China’s Communist leader is still trying to stamp out religion. Yet, Vatican is turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the problem.

Tue Apr 23,
2019 – 12:14 pm EST. LifeSiteNews.

By now it is clear to
everyone — even Vatican diplomats, presumably — that things are going from bad
to worse for Catholics in China. The secret Sino-Vatican agreement that was
supposed to provide some protection for the Catholic Church in China has
instead been turned on its head. It is perversely being used by the Communist
authorities to crush the long-suffering but faithful Underground Catholic
Church while the Vatican stands silently by.

The
Communist authorities are telling Underground bishops, priests, and laity that
the new agreement not only requires them to register with the government, but
to join the so-called “Catholic Patriotic Association.” This nearly all of them
refuse to do, since they know that the Patriotic Association is not in
communion with Rome.

As punishment, the
Communists have begun arresting resisters and demolishing their churches and
shrines. The Underground Diocese of Fengxiang, Shaanxi province, has been
particularly hard hit. On April 4, 2019, a newly built church in the diocese,
still under construction, was destroyed as parishioners looked on in horror.

But even
churches and shrines that have stood for centuries are being reduced to rubble.
Last October, shortly after the signing of the Sino-Vatican agreement, the
beautiful shrine of Our Lady of the Mountain, located in Yunnan province,
was razed
to the ground.

The Vatican
seems to be turning a blind eye to the pressure on bishops and priests
to join the schismatic Catholic Patriotic Association, perhaps on the grounds
that it may provide a safe haven for Catholics in China, but in this, it is
mistaken. Being a “Patriotic” bishop does not provide automatic immunity from
persecution. Nor does being a “Patriotic” parish necessarily protect the parish
church from the wrecking ball.

Take the
Qianwang Catholic Church in Jinan City, Shandong province, for example, which
dates from 1750. Despite being an approved parish in a diocese run by a
“Patriotic” bishop, the church was demolished last August. The Blessed Mother’s
severed head gazes forlornly on the rubble that is all that remains.

As
LifeSiteNews has reported,
another Catholic shrine in Fengxiang, China, is currently slated for
destruction. The Marian shrine at Mujiaping was temporarily saved from
demolition when local Catholics formed a human wall on the steps leading up to
it.

The
authorities will not be deterred, however, and they have assembled a small army
of some 600 hundred police and officials. We must pray that no lives are lost
when this heavily armed force storms the shrine to do its destructive work.

In the face
of such ongoing persecution and destruction, the silence from the proponents of
the agreement that was signed last September has been deafening. Cardinal
Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, who by all accounts is the author of
the accord, continues to counsel patience.

As Parolin
told journalists on April 3: “We signed this agreement to help advance
religious freedom, to find normalization for the Catholic community there, and
then for all other religions to have space and a role to play in society which
is recognized.”

Yet, judging by the
benchmarks that he himself set, the agreement has failed to deliver. In the
eight months since its signing, the agreement has been used by Beijing as an
excuse to limit — not expand — the religious freedom of Catholics in China. If anything, the authorities have intensified
their efforts restrict all the activities of all religions, and seem intent
upon driving them out of the public life altogether

It would be
unfair to blame the Vatican’s deal with China for all of these setbacks, since
the current wave of persecution predates its signing. Not only that, but it
affects religious believers of all stripes: Buddhists, Muslims, and Taoists
along with Catholics and other Christians.

The
Communist Party imposed harsh
new restrictions on all religions in February 2018. The new
regulations require that all religious activities be held in state-approved
locations. Any religious activity held elsewhere, such as a Catholic
summer camps or Bible studies in private homes, are “illegal gatherings,” the
new regulations declare, strictly punishable by law.

The new
regulations also strictly
forbade minors from attending Mass, receiving catechism instruction,
or engaging in any other religious activity. All priests, pastors, and
religious are required to register with the relevant official body. Catholic
priests who refuse to join the Catholic Patriotic Association are be forced to
leave active ministry.

I know that
Vatican officials were aware of the new restrictions on religious activity; I
briefed them myself last May.

The
Vatican’s deal with China did not cause this new wave of persecution. But it
was so spectacularly mistimed that it may
have made things worse, as the U.S. ambassador at large for religious
freedom, Sam Brownback, recently suggested. “A religious group should be
allowed to pick its own leaders, period,” Brownback, who is a practicing Roman
Catholic, said. “And now you have the Chinese government inserting
itself in this.”

This is just the
beginning. Communist Leader Xi Jinping, like Chairman Mao Zedong before him,
seems determined to extinguish all religious faith within his country,
replacing it with faith in the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, who
happens to be Xi himself.

When
Catholics recently questioned why they were being forced to study the works of
Xi Jinping, an official bluntly told
them, “It is because you believe in God that you are required to study and
answer the questions. This is to change your thinking.” The official added that
because they thanked God instead of the Party, they needed to “study Xi” more.

The goal is to
brainwash everyone into believing only in Communist leader Xi and his party,
rejecting God and His Church.

Communism
has always been a total ideology, one that seeks to control not only the acts
and words of those under its power, but their very thoughts as well. Those who
refuse to submit are enemies of the revolution — counter-revolutionaries — who
must be identified, targeted, and destroyed. This is a political system that
feeds off of the destruction of an endless series of “enemies,” real and
imagined.

Catholics
and other believers are now in the cross-hairs. After all, what better target
for an officially atheistic party than religion? And among religious believers,
who are more suspect than Chinese Catholics, the very headquarters of whose
church is located in a foreign country?

Driving a wedge
between Chinese Catholics and the Universal Church is only the beginning, I
fear. This so-called “sinicization” may only be a prelude to increasing
persecution, if not outright annihilation.

Perhaps it
is time for the Holy Father to entrust China to the Virgin Mary, as Queen of
Peace, through her Immaculate Heart. In the meantime, let’s us all pray for our
suffering co-religionists in China.